Seagate External - Lovely, BUT!!!...

danrow_99 · 15 Mar 2007 at 02:48

A few months ago I bought a USB 320GB drive to augment my laptop.
The drive was pre-formatted so I just plugged it in and off I went. Performance is great, and it's been totally reliable so I was well-chuffed. Sadly, it wasn't until I had about 120GB on it that I tried to put a 5GB file there. It was only then that I realised that it had been formatted as fat32 (i.e. no single files over 4GB)!
What the Hell are Seagate playing at? If they are trying to be helpful by pre-formatting drives then why use such an archaic format? Surely there should at least be a very prominent warning on the packaging. Maybe they have an interest in Partition Magic, that's the only way I can see to rectify things without spending a day loading and unloading my DVD writer!
Thank God Seagate don't sell cars, it's pretty hard to get hold of 4 star leaded petrol these days....

Can anyone suggest a logical reason for Seagate choosing to use this format?
Is anyone else as annoyed as I am?

I'm kicking myself for not checking the file format before I started to use the drive, and I know some of you will be of the opinion that it's not Seagate to blame. If that's you, then of course, please feel free to keep your opinions to yourself (I already annoyed with myself quite enough thank you!).....

masslac · 15 Mar 2007 at 02:54

danrow_99 said:
I'm kicking myself for not checking the file format before I started to use the drive, and I know some of you will be of the opinion that it's not Seagate to blame. If that's you, then of course, please feel free to keep your opinions to yourself (I already annoyed with myself quite enough thank you!).....

So what you have done is made a thread and already discounted any objective argument. Great.

danrow_99 · 15 Mar 2007 at 06:53

masslac said:
So what you have done is made a thread and already discounted any objective argument. Great.

Woah there cowboy! Caaaaaaaaalm down!

As a stranger I would no more expect you to keep your opinions to yourself on my say-so than you should expect a stranger to do so on yours!

Evidently my brusque approach has been misinterpreted and therefore requires some justification...

I didn't intend any offence. In the hope of provoking a spirited counterpoint I admit I expressed my opinion in a somewhat pugnacious manner. I do not apologise for that however, as I believe that the aggressive expression of opinions has always been, and always will be, the life-blood of all civilised debate and fora.
Just think how dull this forum would be if no-one ever expressed a strongly-worded opinion, or if no-one was ever deliberately bellicose in response.
My sign-off was a (almost completely) frivolous adjunct to my post, and certainly not meant to be taken seriously. The post as a whole was primarily designed to fecund an entertaining and perhaps illucidatory exchange of views on the issue raised, which I believe most members of this forum would relish.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the context that I wasn't serious about not welcoming any criticism. Surely you realise that just because someone tells you to do (or not do) something it doesn't mean you have to do (or not do) it! That excuse didn't work at Neuremberg 60 years ago and it's not going to wash now....

rpstewart · 15 Mar 2007 at 08:51

danrow_99 said:
What the Hell are Seagate playing at? If they are trying to be helpful by pre-formatting drives then why use such an archaic format?

That would be the archaic format that's readable by anything then....

Just use the convert.exe utility that comes with Windows if you want to change it to NTFS.

crazyswede · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:34

As rpstewart said... The following is from microsoft windows help:

To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt
Open the Command Prompt window.
In the command prompt window, type
convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

For example, typing convert D: /fs:ntfs would format drive D: with the ntfs format.

Notes

To open a command prompt, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
You can convert FAT or FAT32 volumes to NTFS with this command

or just type 'ntfs convert' into windows help search.

The reason it's fat32 is probably because its more backward compatible. Some people still might have windows 98 and there is better support in Linux for fat32.

My new laptops system partition was fat32 :rolleyes:

squiffy · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:41

Just format it to NTFS. Duh..what's the the big deal?

megatron · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:20

squiffy said:
Just format it to NTFS. Duh..what's the the big deal?

If he formatted it then he would lose 120Gb of data. Im guessing that u didnt know of the method posted above, and I admit its the first Ive heard of it. I base this conclusion on your incorrect use of terminology (assuming you didnt really want him to lose all his files as he explained in the OP).

"Oh look someone just posted the solution to this dilema, I know Ill just say that I knew that already"

squiffy · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:22

well obviously copy data across before formatting....you don't need to be told that, and blinding obvious.

megatron · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:36

squiffy said:
well obviously copy data across before formatting....you don't need to be told that, and blinding obvious.

You obviously didnt read the OP, he said without archiving to DvD and incidentally didnt want to purchase partition magic either.

squiffy · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:40

megatron said:
You obviously didnt read the OP, he said without archiving to DvD and incidentally didnt want to purchase partition magic either.

So he's got 200GB of data that's not backed up? :rolleyes:

I wouldn't recommend converting a partition. Instead backup the data onto DVD-R (as he should) then format it as NTFS, then read in the data. Or use existing hard drives for storage and copy it across.

If he doesn't have other hard drives, doesn't have it backed up, or want to buy PM, or use conversion then he's stuffed.

M0t0r0la · 16 Mar 2007 at 09:58

The reason they used FAT32 is compatibility, MAC's and pretty much all versions of windows can read FAT32.

You should have done a 'FULL' NTFS format of the new drive when you bought it, as you should with all new hard drives.

masslac · 16 Mar 2007 at 10:20

danrow_99 said:
Woah there cowboy! Caaaaaaaaalm down!

As a stranger I would no more expect you to keep your opinions to yourself on my say-so than you should expect a stranger to do so on yours!

Evidently my brusque approach has been misinterpreted and therefore requires some justification...

I didn't intend any offence. In the hope of provoking a spirited counterpoint I admit I expressed my opinion in a somewhat pugnacious manner. I do not apologise for that however, as I believe that the aggressive expression of opinions has always been, and always will be, the life-blood of all civilised debate and fora.
Just think how dull this forum would be if no-one ever expressed a strongly-worded opinion, or if no-one was ever deliberately bellicose in response.
My sign-off was a (almost completely) frivolous adjunct to my post, and certainly not meant to be taken seriously. The post as a whole was primarily designed to fecund an entertaining and perhaps illucidatory exchange of views on the issue raised, which I believe most members of this forum would relish.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the context that I wasn't serious about not welcoming any criticism. Surely you realise that just because someone tells you to do (or not do) something it doesn't mean you have to do (or not do) it! That excuse didn't work at Neuremberg 60 years ago and it's not going to wash now....

tl;dr

You should have formatted the drive before use. That's all there is to it.

photoshop · 16 Mar 2007 at 11:00

All you guys need to clam the *sex* down.
No need to slay the guy.
If you cant be helpful and just throw out insults and crappy remarks then dont post as your not helping him.

Afew of you's needed reminding what the author originally said which really says something about your intelligence levels. Dont be so quick to criticise

megatron · 16 Mar 2007 at 18:08

Thx for your helpful post and praise of some poster's intelligence lvls. I was reading the dictionary and discovered this new word, "hypocrite"; not got round to reading the definition yet.

warren_1979 · 16 Mar 2007 at 23:07

Can't you compress the 5 gig file?

bledd · 17 Mar 2007 at 01:23

M0t0r0la said:
The reason they used FAT32 is compatibility, MAC's and pretty much all versions of windows can read FAT32.

You should have done a 'FULL' NTFS format of the new drive when you bought it, as you should with all new hard drives.

:nod:

Rambaud · 18 Mar 2007 at 11:37

Yes, FAT32 is needed for me to use my Seagate external drive with my Macbook, laptop and PC.

However, I bought Macdrive 7 so I could use the Mac's HFS+ with my laptop and PC.

There have been some reports that HFS+ is faster than NTFS in Windows XP - although I have not tested that yet.

danrow_99 · 22 Mar 2007 at 03:10

megatron said:
Thx for your helpful post and praise of some poster's intelligence lvls. I was reading the dictionary and discovered this new word, "hypocrite"; not got round to reading the definition yet.

In the danrow_99 dictionary the (recently updated) definition of the word 'hypocrite' now reads - A generally great guy who is probably very intelligent and reasonable and shares a name in common with a popular image-editing software package. esp. one who kindly defends those who post perfectly valid requests for advice and are then unjustly persecuted in the responses of those who haven't bothered to read the original question...

Thanks to all for the advice, I didn't realise that I could convert to NTFS without deleting all the data, I'll give it a go (deep breath!)...

megatron · 22 Mar 2007 at 09:52

danrow_99 said:
In the danrow_99 dictionary the (recently updated) definition of the word 'hypocrite' now reads - A generally great guy who is probably very intelligent and reasonable and shares a name in common with a popular image-editing software package. esp. one who kindly defends those who post perfectly valid requests for advice and are then unjustly persecuted in the responses of those who haven't bothered to read the original question...

Thanks to all for the advice, I didn't realise that I could convert to NTFS without deleting all the data, I'll give it a go (deep breath!)...

Eh?!
Its very puzzling indeed that u choose to quote me, I was not one of those who belittled u; I just pointed out that someone sticking up for u was hypocrytical. Since he was then flaming himself. Oh and in my original post I corrected someone for not reading your post saving u the trouble of saying it.

So all in all, Im very puzzled why u have picked out one of my posts, none of which didnt ridicule u in a thread generally were saying u should have been aware from the start which format it was in.

Perhaps take your own advice next time and read the thread from the start, second thoughts it might not help in your case!

danrow_99 · 4 Apr 2007 at 20:03

megatron said:
Eh?!
Its very puzzling indeed that u choose to quote me, I was not one of those who belittled u; I just pointed out that someone sticking up for u was hypocrytical. Since he was then flaming himself. Oh and in my original post I corrected someone for not reading your post saving u the trouble of saying it.

So all in all, Im very puzzled why u have picked out one of my posts, none of which didnt ridicule u in a thread generally were saying u should have been aware from the start which format it was in.

Perhaps take your own advice next time and read the thread from the start, second thoughts it might not help in your case!

Hold on, I was actually being nice about you, sorry if it came accross differently. Sorry for any offence, and thanks for sticking up for me!